Team Abu Dhabi by Black Falcon celebrates after winning the Gulf 12 Hours. (Photo: John Dagys)

Team Abu Dhabi by Black Falcon broke AF Corse’s win streak at Yas Marina Circuit by taking a dominant victory in the third edition of the Gulf 12 Hours.

The No. 3 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 of Jeroen Bleekemolen, Bernd Schneider and Khaled Al Qubaisi cruised to a one-minute and 41-second win over the two-time and defending overall winning AF Corse squad, in what was a clear-cut race for the German-run, UAE-backed effort, nearly from the onset.

In 1977, I think it was, P.J. O’Rouke wrote a hilarious and controversial review of a $70,000 Aston-Martin Volante for Car & Driver. In that review O’Rourke famously wrote that he couldn’t give an accurate take on the nuances of the car’s performance threshold. O’Rourke said something to the effect of — and I’m paraphrasing here – that he drove the car “like it had a trunk full of live babies and you would, too, if you were in someone else’s $70,000 car.”

Being a young, impressionable kid, I thought that was funny.

Flash ahead 36 years and I now understand exactly what he meant.

That’s because I recently spent a week with a 2013 Rolls-Royce Ghost Extended Wheelbase, which carried a base price of $296,000 and an as-tested priced of $356,770, which is roughly double the median housing price in Cabarrus County, N.C., the place that I call home. And as you can imagine, in the little 5,000-person town where I live, the big Rolls-Royce stood out like Miley Cyrus twerking in a Baptist church on Sunday morning.

Herkel was giving a family member a ride of a lifetime around the 2.676-mile circuit when the car veered off the track and slammed the inside wall. The car rolled several times before landing right side up in the gravel trap.

Chip Ganassi Racing Teams (CGRT) and NTT DATA, a leading global IT services provider, announced today they have signed IndyCar veteran and seven-time winner Ryan Briscoe to drive the No. 8 NTT DATA Chevrolet in the IndyCar Series.

Along with the signing of Briscoe, Tony Kanaan will move into the seat vacated by four-time IndyCar Series Champion and three-time Indianapolis 500 Winner Dario Franchitti in the No. 10 Target Chevrolet. Kanaan will run alongside three-time and reigning IndyCar Series Champion and Indianapolis 500 Winner Scott Dixon as part of Team Target.